A Fascinating Case Study in Failure

[♡]

Genuinely (no troll). I have a strong interest in business analysis, game development, advertising trends/group psychology, analytics, etc; & this game is fascinating in particular for numerous reasons.

We've seen countless examples of "le woke, le broke" before, but they're frequently marred & surrounded in other controversies; terrible optimisation, overpriced, bad reviews (user or otherwise), terrible predatory business practices (always online, microtransactions, DRM, etc) that muddy the water enough to make it so the root cause of failure is not entirely clear as a formula.

Now, credit given where credit due; this game does actually have a striking, cohesive, & visually appealing art direction. I'd dare to say it's actually even good (certainly way above a lot of other games out there that have enjoyed great success). Ostensibly, the store page looks professional/good, too; it's also sitting at a "positive" review rating as well (though there aren't that many actual reviews (only 21 total as of present).

Now, they say news sites comments/forums in particular are terrible for general social extrapolatation; they constitute only 1-3% of general total consensus typically, whilst also feeding in the worst kind of people, having the most insane fringe takes, rendering said data mostly worthless for gauging overall trends. This is notable in the gaming sector as well - You have hardcore fans giving x,y,z reasons for failure; though they're overwhemingly too absorbed in their own echo chambers (on both sides politically) to notice that the general 'gamer' tends to treat games more like cinema tickets. In other words, buying decisions form the basis of snap judgements formed in a few minutes for most consumers. In reality, whether a particular movie goer buys ticket A or B is usually just formed on bases as simple as whether the poster/ad looked cool, or whether they recognise any names, etc (very simple & quick judgement bases mostly).

This game had good exposure prior to release, & prior to everyone knowing in was going to be 'woke', too. It's total exposure wasn't even dependent on the controversy of that, even. It pretty much passes general muster on every other cursory glance, too (the superficial levels that should matter to the mass market consumer drones constituting the majority of potential buyers out there). It still failed spectacularly though (Steamdb at present lists 33 players right now, with an all-time peak of just 83). Not even managing to break 100 players is actually so bad it's almost literally unbelievable. As has been noted elsewhere, there's more people around watching the ensuing dumpster fire, than actually playing it!

With all that said, I'll conclude by stating the obvious, which I think shouldn't even be remotely contentious to anyone.... Dustborn is a SJW game if ever there was one. It's obvious why it's getting panned by the crowd sick of that sort of thing....but why did this fail to connect with the actual SJW crowd out there? This is seemingly everything they would want in a game, but it just utterly failed to sell even among the target audience.

Meanwhile, Wukong studio requests influencers not to include "feminist propaganda", & outright takes a giant steaming dump on the SJW crowd (with other incendiary language & zero apologies), but it's sitting at an Overwhelmingly Positive review (277,639) nonetheless.

Anyone with actual credible links/data offer meaningful business analysis on this whole thing (I.E. not gaming site/glorified opinion blog worthless trash)? Anyone have the exact details of the tax brakes/EA funding contracts & it's stipulations for this game studio? This game just makes absolutely no sense from a business perspective...

I've played the demo to gain further insight, but I'm not even sure anymore if the whole thing was written by ChatGPT at this point, or a bunch of Steve Buscemi "How Do You Do Fellow Kids?" stereotypes in suits. It's actually so bizarre, tone deaf & cringe that I'm inclined to think the people that wrote & conceived this whole game must have been autistic? Because the whole thing actually comes off like a bunch of cringe 13 year old kids wrote it, but I think it's safe to remove that as a likely probability. I digress, but at one point the game introduces a mechanic where you have to "trigger" yourself as a fighting buff.... I mean, this is either completely unflinching satire or bots writing this stuff. A real human just couldn't have wrote something like that unironically! Also, anyone have any pictures/pertinent quotes/interviews with people directly involved with making the game? I'm really curious how exactly all this mess came together (no really, I am).

[Spriggan]

the asnwer is simply. This game is for minority, a minority that screem around on social media, that call for games being not incllusive or sexist ecc ecc, but at the end, most of them aren't gamer. So, you make a game for a minority, that means the majority will not buy it, and in that minority less than half will also buy the game...

[[{******---Dead4Life---******}]]

They pampered to the 1% who will never buy a game they say they "support".
This has to be some type of scam, there is NO way a "gaming" company will not research the market to see what people actually PLAY...
LOL

[♡]

It's definitely not that simple. Even assuming SJWs form a loud & overrepresented trumpet making a whole lot of noise (which is accurate mostly), it still just can't account for only 21 players playing the game right now straight after release.... That's actually shocking! I've seen literal asset flips (that look as much & are just completely terrible) made by only 1 person have more reviews/people playing than Dustborn. They also had zero PR, unlike this game.

What's bizarre too, is you have a bunch of sarcastic "Thanks haters for making me aware of the game so I can buy it now" posts, but absolutely zero purchase icons next to their names....lol.

Even when you consider other insane fringe movements; veganism, feminism, etc; they still manage to capture sales/audiences even amongst already incredibly tiny potential market segments. I know the SJW/pronouns scene is bigger than those, but it didn't enjoy even anywhere near the level of financial success I'd expect those groups to do.

[Fairy]

here I explain to you how it work. they make money from investor and not customer. what kind of people invest in this game you make ask? a ponzi scheme pump and dumper of course, they put money in a game with DEI tag as fast as they can, there are web that list all DEI levels for a gameand cash out as soon as possible. the developer could also run a money laundering scheme as well with this as their front

[Radagast]

truly a game made for white liberal american twitter users

[♡]

Originally posted by Ferranis:

The studio might have actually gone insane before developing this title.
Or money laundering.

This is clearly a joke post....but I actually had to consider this as a 'realistic' possibility in this particular game's development, when I otherwise never would have in virtually any other business venture lol.

People throw hyperbole around a lot (especially kids)..... but this whole game is literally INSANE! Like, actually insane! Sane people just do not invest years of their lives into absurd endeavours like this. I've seen some dedicated pranks taking up weeks of people's time before, but I just can't process this entire game being produced & financed at face value.

My most likely conclusion at this point, is that the game would have turned a 'business profit/wage' for staff involved, regardless of a market success. I just need to see a EU contract to actually support that. I don't even really believe that, but there's just zero other probable explanations to offer instead.

I mean, if you told me that this game development team somehow formed after meeting each other through a mental health group, that would actually be more believable & make sense at this point.

[Sunsetter]

Your mistake is in thinking the primary goal here was profit.
It was not.

[Tubey]

Originally posted by ♡:

Dustborn is a SJW game if ever there was one. It's obvious why it's getting panned by the crowd sick of that sort of thing....but why did this fail to connect with the actual SJW crowd out there? This is seemingly everything they would want in a game, but it just utterly failed to sell even among the target audience.

Because that audience doesn't exist.

Gamers play for escapism. We don't play Sonic The Hedgehog because we identify as blue, fast erinaceidae - we play to be entertained, not lectured.

The people behind these games live in bubbles where they believe they're creating high art and there's this huge, untapped audience of 'progressive' gamers that are aching for this direction.

There isn't.

This wasn't made to be a 'game'; it was made to be interactive propaganda, and people can see straight through it. It's not creating an interesting commentary on anything either, because it's so fully committed to the belief they are right and everyone who can't see 'the light' are bigoted/stupid, that it's just an aggressive sermon, slapping players in the face with 'the message'.

The irony is most people are middle ground. If a game come out featuring Trump-worshipping, MAGA hat wearing rednecks going around defending their gun rights from 'Antifa', the reaction would be just as mocking from the vast majority of gamers. Because people don't want it in games - political subtext is fine, it's largely unavoidable in narrative-driven games, and you can go back to the 90s to the likes of FF7 for environmental messaging in games and so on, but it has to be done right.

[♡]

I never actually operated from the basis of "thinking the primary goal here was profit", but it is reasonable to assume it formed a second, third....focus. This game is seemingly anti-profit. There's a huge difference.

In relation to other posts, pump & dump short selling schemes would make sense if they weren't so difficult to get away with now in this context. The monitoring process is massively regulated by automated AI now, so it's way harder to get away with, & has extremely harsh white collar penalties when prosecuted.

Money laundering scheme - The game would actually have to have money going through the business for that to really work lol. Laundering doesn't really work when you have publicly available tax records, & the laundering filter is doing virtually zero sales (which is also easy to cross reference/check for investigators).

[RoiRoi]

I think its a bit simpler then that. I think most people who're the loudest simply don't play as many games as they talk about. Its kinda like how you hear a lot of people complaining about the current state of comic books but then when you run polls, most of them don't buy them anymore and just get updates from people that do. I myself know a lot about whats happening in marvel comics and I've never once brought a marvel comic book.

Same thing likely happening here. You see a lot of the SJW type praising these types of games online but they don't actually play all of them. Games like Wukong target a far more active set of gamers who're less likely to talk about a game as they are to play it.

Not For Broadcast is game about choosing when and where to censor or uncover live television to make for the best propaganda. Imagine if Dustborn had a bit of that decision making. Could have been really interesting, but I think they were more interested in spreading a message then of making an interesting game. If people can figure that out just by watching the trailer, then of course its not gonna sell.

[rupsch]

Watch the anime "Losing Money to be a Tycoon". It might help you understand what is going on here.

[♡]

Originally posted by Tubey:

If a game come out featuring Trump-worshipping, MAGA hat wearing rednecks going around defending their gun rights from 'Antifa', the reaction would be just as mocking from the vast majority of gamers

I have a feeling a game like that would probably enjoy quite a lot of success, but people would enjoy it ironically, & percieve it as satire, regardless of whether that was even intended by the developer or not.

What's interesting is that we live in an age where the whole concept of 'liberal' has been polluted to the point it's no longer become even recognizable over just a few decades. Amusingly, you now have modern 'liberals' that are overwhelmingly anti-free speech; & have more in common with actual Nazis (National Socialism - the actual economic & political principles), than the people they often like to accuse of falsely being neo-Nazis.

Modern 'liberals' just don't do satire or irony. Not real satire/irony, at least (or very well). They're way too literal in thinking, & scared of anyone to either misconstrue, or miss primary & secondary meanings. I guess modern conservatives do it much better via necessity, & evade detection on liberal social media platforms (that form the majority).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/507010/MrPresident/ Very Positive reviews (4,078)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/515040/Make_America_Great_Again_The_Trump_Presidency/ Very Positive reviews (1,612)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2487350/Alex_Jones_NWO_Wars/ Very Positive reviews (1,426) I haven't played any of these trash games, but this game can apparently be completed in just 30mins! Even total garbage, low effort meme games enjoy way more success than Dustborn. There's a successful game I can't remember the name of, where you played a redneck gun nut border patrol citizen kicking out Mexicans, whinny liberals, etc (basically more or less what you described).

[type-1]

Originally posted by ♡:

People throw hyperbole around a lot (especially kids)..... but this whole game is literally INSANE! Like, actually insane! Sane people just do not invest years of their lives into absurd endeavours like this. I've seen some dedicated pranks taking up weeks of people's time before, but I just can't process this entire game being produced & financed at face value.

My most likely conclusion at this point, is that the game would have turned a 'business profit/wage' for staff involved, regardless of a market success. I just need to see a EU contract to actually support that. I don't even really believe that, but there's just zero other probable explanations to offer instead.

They got a 200 thousand grant from the Norwegian Film Institute, no contract just here's the check go have fun.
https://www.nfi.no/eng/news/2019/all-time-record-grants-by-norwegian-film-institute-to-apps-productions

In an interview the devs stated that Donald Trump becoming president was what inspired them to make the game. I know that Trump Derangement Syndrome isn't an official mental health diagnosis yet but I'd say it's fair to say that they did go crazy and then decide to make this game.

[Martyr]

The EU was just looking for new ways to waste taxpayers money; nothing new to see here.

[♡]

On a somewhat related note

Black Myth: Wukong - 2,267,573 players right now

This is also fascinating, because it kind of looks really generic to me. I also don't want to play as a stupid monkey protagonist :/ The PR was also hilariously unhinged, as mentioned before. I really wish I could see the total player numbers by region/country right now :/